Gaining confidence in writing

Blogging can lead to many exciting, different walks of life and can also open doors that weren’t initially expected. Read how blogging led to a fabulous new start for Sarah Miles, author of The Voice of Sarah Miles blog and editor of Paper Swans.

I vividly remember walking to school with my friend, Rachel. Two earnest eight year-olds discussing our future careers. She wanted to be a pop star (Ant-mania was sweeping the UK) and I wanted to be a writer. Simple as that.

It didn’t happen, of course. I ended up studying theology and then to drama school and finally, I became a teacher. I got married, had kids and it was only in 2011, when we moved county for my husband’s career, that I found myself out of work for the first time ever. I was at home, feeling bored, lonely and unimportant. Then, a friend suggested I try this thing called ‘blogging’. She had a friend who was travelling the world and blogging about it – maybe I could try to write something?

A small spark was ignited, a tiny glowing ember that hadn’t been fanned since I was a child.

And so my blog, Hello Wall, was born. Shortly after setting it up I discovered BritMums and I signed up and met two lovely bloggers, also in their first throes of blogging (Words with Wine and Medicated Follower of Fashion, if you’re wondering!).

To cut a long story short, I blogged almost daily, met lots of lovely bloggers, discovered Twitter (still addicted) and, to my surprise, got nominated for blogging awards.

Time passed and I discovered I wanted to write more and more and I found myself drifting to my first love – poetry. Through Victoria Welton’s ‘Prose for Thought’ Linky and BritMums ‘Poetry and Prose Round-up’ I gained the one thing they can’t teach you on conferences and courses, the one thing that can’t be found on Google, the one thing that Amazon can’t sell you.

I gained confidence. 

Confidence in my writing and confidence in myself. I met other writers and poets in the same situation as me and a new, small community formed on social media where we wrote, chatted, lamented and grew as writers.

Since then, life has escalated at an alarming, but exciting rate. I’ve had poems accepted for publication and my short (flash) fiction has won accolades and even a competition. My dream of being a writer was, thirty two years later, coming true.

All of this has led me to where I am now. I saw that there was a real need to support emerging writers like myself because it’s a tough, tough world when you want to get published and the rejections come thick and fast. So, in April 2014, I started a new website, Paper Swans, which would run competitions and publish ‘iPamphlets’ which are eBook versions of poetry pamphlets. I wanted it to be a safe place where poets and writers could feel they could submit work and, if it was accepted, would be given due exposure and publication.  We ran projects like our Body Beautiful campaign and went to the Edinburgh, giving out micropoetry to unsuspecting festival-goers.

Less than a year later, I found I had a new dream and in 2015 I turned Paper Swans into a small press. We are about to publish our second anthology, ‘Schooldays’, and August 2015 was spent doing a small tour, finishing in Edinburgh where our anthologies will be sold in the Literary Festival bookshop. Working as an editor and publisher has given me a whole new perspective and I am loving every minute of it.

Dreams can come true. But sometimes, it’s you that has to make them happen.

Sarah Miles is author of three blogs, she is also a teacher but like many bloggers she would love to write for a living.  She writes book reviews for a national educational magazine, she has written articles for local parenting magazines and was chosen to read out her post ‘The Downstairs Loo‘ at BritMums Live 2012 Bloggers’ Keynote and her poem A Mother’s CV at the 2014 Bloggers’ Keynote. She was selected to guest blog for Caitlin Moran’s website for the launch of her books ‘How to be a Woman‘ and ‘Moranthology‘. Find her on Twitter @_sarahmiles_

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BritMums is the UK’s original collective of lifestyle bloggers and digital influencers, fueling the country’s most influential social content. We lead the online conversation with members who are parent social influencers creating content on topics ranging from food, parenting, travel, politics, style and more.

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